There’s a saying, “The family that PRAYS together, stays together.”  In his latest movie, Tyler Perry used a play on words---replacing “pray” with PREY.  The definition of prey is: To victimize or make a profit at someone else's expense.  That is, in part, what this movie was all about.   

William Cartwright (played by Cole Hauser) tried to prey on his own mother with schemes to snatch the family business away from her control.  Andrea (Sanaa Lathan) preys on her own husband by putting him down and making him feel inferior to her Harvard Business School education.  She also forces him to struggle financially while she stashes away hundreds of thousands of dollars she receives from her lover on the side---who also happens to be her boss (Cartwright). 

Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard play long-time friends who also happen to be the mothers of the adulterers.  Perry has taken a piece of the Thelma and Louise movie (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon) as well as The Bucket List (Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson) to illustrate their characters. 

In my opinion, Perry has proven, once again, that black actors and actresses can play roles beyond the stereotypical pimps, whores, single moms looking for a man, street hustlers and drug dealers.  No disrespect to Denzel but I, for one, am also tired of seeing blacks get leading roles as bad ass cops who always seem to end up on the wrong side of the law.
 

In the movie’s first weekend, it finished a strong second with over $18 million in box office sales.  Perry lets moviegoers see that we all deal with some of the same issues, no matter what our race, and what’s done in the dark will eventually come to the light.